Cormac Gordon: Clemens gets off, but not all the way

APRoger Clemens hands back a signed baseball as he leaves federal court yesterday.

So, Roger Clemens beat the rap yesterday.

Sort of.

He bested the government in its desire to convict him of perjury.

Kind of.

The glowering right-hander with the seemingly ageless fastball was found not guilty of lying to Congress about illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs. Not guilty of obstruction too.

The seven-time Cy Young Award winner and ninth winningest pitcher of all time drew a pass all around.

And this is the second trial, you’ll recall.

There was an earlier mistrial last year.

Which means that, after four years of investigating and prosecuting and demanding and pointing fingers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington D.C. came up about as empty against Clemens as some overmatched banjo hitter in a 0-2 hole with the game on the line.

The feds struck out swinging, and it wasn’t even close.

So, now what happens?

What happens to the way Clemens is judged going forward? What becomes of his Hall of Fame chances, for instance?

Where, now that all this is legally settled, does Roger Clemens stand?

Well, for starters, the 49-year-old, who won an astounding 354 games in his major league career and who was a lock to be voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame before he was suspected of using steroids or HGH, is not about to see his conviction overturned in the court of public opinion.

Not for a long, long time, anyway.

Despite the fact that only one other pitcher of the past 45 years (Greg Maddux with 355 victories) is among the Top 10 on the all-time career win list, Clemens is not going to shake this shadow.

It will take decades and decades for the give-no-quarter baseball superstar to have any chance of dodging an association with PEDs.

He falls into the same category as Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriquez and Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa and Manny Ramirez, in that sense.

“I’m never going to get my name restored,” Clemens has insisted through all of this.

And he’s probably right about that.

Does he deserve a plaque in Cooperstown?

It’s a murky issue.

On the one hand, Clemens has insisted consistently and passionately that he never used PEDs. The United States government decided to call him out on that assertion. A lot of supposedly smart people spent a great deal of their time and our money attempting to prove otherwise.

They failed miserably.

As someone with a Hall of Fame vote — Clemens, Sosa and Bonds all come up for a vote for the first time in 2013 — I believe that has to count for more than a little.

Do I have serious suspicions about Clemens? You bet I do.

In my own personal way of judging such things, I’m just like most fans: I believe Roger Clemens used PEDs.

Do I have proof?

Not a bit.

And how do I feel about all the other players under the same sort of suspicion?

I think most are likely also guilty.

One issue that confuses the subject is this: What of the possibility that it wasn’t just a handful of players involved in the use of PEDs? What if PED use was rampant in professional baseball for a period of time?

There seems to be enough circumstantial evidence to make that case.

If that was the case, can we still deny anyone who was ever suspected? It’s potentially an awfully large list, one that could gut an entire generation of possibilities.

What, at the end of the day, would a baseball Hall of Fame really mean, anyway, if Clemens and Bonds and A-Rod and the rest weren’t members?

That’s also a pretty big sports question.

And it’s one that didn’t come close to being answered in a Washington court room yesterday afternoon.